It Was a Group Effort
by Yunaichi
Summary: I've come to the conclusion that our trio is like a triangle. If even one of us is taken away for too long, the other two collapse. I guess this was our downfall in the end. When Francis and Antonio came out to me that they were dating, I couldn't help but fear for them - for us - rather than be happy. Always listen to your gut instincts. BTT AU. Not quite a romance.


Hello! Well, welcome to my first BTT fic. Before I get this thing going, I'd like to start off by telling you guys that recently, some pretty chaotic stuff has happened to me. To ease the stress, I started writing, and well, this came out. This story is actually based on the real events going on in my life, but I've changed a lot, mostly so it goes better with the setting.

**Warning:** This will only be rated T for now, but because of the events that happen later, I might end up changing it to M. No, don't get your hopes up that this means that there will be an overly romantic sex scene, but there is a lot of sexual content and just a lot of stress that I don't think anyone who're these boys' age should have to go through. This is **not** a happy story, and I know most of it will be hard for me to write, but I hope that you guys can find some enjoyment of reading this.

Now that that's over with, I hope you all enjoy this!

* * *

The over head July sun dried the freshly placed water droplets on our skin as the three of us squeezed onto two poolside-chairs, eating our lunch in silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, though. I don't think any silence between us could be a bad one at that point.

The noises of the pool were enough to fill in. The slapping splash of canon balls and the laughing screams of the bystanders who got hit with the splash were almost enough to even block out the quiet whispering between the other two. I watched them from the corner of my eye as they exchanged soft words of secrecy, pretending to be focusing on my noodles.

As my curiosity in their conversation grew, the silence between the three of us became shaky - the feeling you get when you know something important is about to be told to you. No one comes out and tells you, but you feel it there, waiting to come out and reveal itself, a stare at the back of your head - except now it was right next to me.

"You know, I'm still confused," I told them casually, intervening in their private conversation. The whispering stopped and they bother looked over at me.

"About what?" the now other confused one asked.

"You know," I slurped down the last spoon full of soup, "About earlier in the pool. You asked him if you should tell me something?" Discarding the empty plastic bowl that each of our meals had come in, I sat cross legged on my towel, turned towards my two best friends.

They couldn't keep something from me forever; that's not how it works in trios.

Blue and brown eyes met nervously, brown ones looking away first in an awkward laugh. I focused on blue, then, looking for an answer, sly smirk on my lips. I'd get whatever juicy secret they had. I had assumed it was probably something stupid, though behind the voice saying to play it off like just more gossip, it was different. I knew it was.

I wish I had listened to that other voice a little more for once. In the back of my mind, my brain was churning out scenario after scenario of what it was. I tried my best to ignore my speculations. I always came up with the most ridiculous ideas.

I kept watching the two of them expectantly, waiting for an answer.

"Well?"

Tanned lips were the next to part, speaking a single word. The one word that changed the next year of my life into something I'd never prepared for:

"Guess."

[line break]

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Instead of jumping into the middle of this story, like I was about to do, I need to set myself up here, or you'll probably be a little lost later on.

How to start of my story...well, I guess I should just be cliché, and start by introducing myself. After all, it's become cliché for a reason.

I'm the most awesome person you'll ever meet, so don't forget the name: Gilbert Beilshmidt. I'm twenty-six years old, and I live with my younger brother, Ludwig. It feels weird to call him my younger brother, though; since he could walk and talk, he's been the one who keeps me in check - more so than our parents.

I guess it has to do with how our family grew up. Stick with me here, it's a bit of a long story.

My great-grandmother and father were born in Prussia, married in Prussia, and they must have had quite the honeymoon, because nine months later, they gave birth to my grandmother. Sadly, Prussia had collapsed by that time, but they continued believing that the family name was under Prussian heritage. Even I still consider myself Prussian, despite having been born in Germany. Ludwig, however, thinks himself German.

But that's beside the point. After my brother and I were born in Germany, our family moved us to the land of opportunity, because, if you've been doing any calculations - which I know you haven't - you'd know that in that time period, it wasn't the greatest time to be in Germany.

When we arrived in the U.S., I was only six - Ludwig was just a newborn. The economy was at its height, and even better, the war was one year away from ending.

However, despite it being the prime time to get a job as a business man or engineer, my father was a bit more...original. He'd always loved wild animals - a trait I took on as well - and opened a small town zoo in literally the middle of nowhere, its logo being a giant circle with random animals from around the world on it. Dad said that it was what the earth really looked like. I thought it looked like I circle with animals on it.

It cost a lot, and my mother told him he was crazy. He wasn't though. What he had built from the ground up would become our life.

Only three years later, my father died in a car accident. It shocked all of us, but with the growing zoo on our hands, letting it slow us down just wasn't an option. Instead, we dove into the work with vehement. My mother went to college classes to train to become a certified veterinarian so she could help the other two that we already had. Ludwig, at age three, helped the janitors clean after closing time and whenever called for. The most work he did was bring the adults sponges or spray stains for them, but he took a liking to it, and turned into possibly the most OCD cleaner I've ever met. Soon he was cleaning _me _up, which didn't amuse me, but my mother found it the most endearing thing in the world.

What did I do? Well, I fed the animals. No, not the lions or foxes or any other animal that might think _I _was the snack. Not yet. Everyone's got to start with baby steps. My first "pets", and my favorite still to this day were the birds. My mother swore my shampoo had to have bird feed in it, because they always followed me home, perched up in my abnormally silver hair. I said it was just because I was that awesome.

I owe a favor to those birds, though. They're the ones to thank for bringing one of my closest life friends to me.

Well, that's not exactly true. I had already met him once before, I suppose, along with the other.

The three of us have met a total of three times in our lives. The first barely counts as a meeting, but I remember it, so it has to. I was only eleven, Ludwig was five, and I was throwing some sunflower seeds at the ducks in the small pond placed in the middle of the zoo.

One minute I had been trying to get this one stupid mallard to just eat the damn seed, and the next I look over and there are two other boys about my age standing to my right, doing the same thing. One was fair skinned with wavy blonde hair, just past his ears, the other with olive skin and dark brown hair that curled haphazardly. When I stopped, they stopped and looked at me. The blonde had deep sea eyes, and the other had irises so green, I was sure that peacocks were jealous that their glistening plumage could never copy it. No words were spoken; we just kept feeding the ducks until their mothers took them away.

The second time took two days, and set the starting tracks for the next three years or so. I was fourteen. It was early morning, and the zoo had just opened. I was running late on feeding my precious birds, and didn't pay attention to the people I passed as I sprinted to the large cages, a bag full of bird seed slung over my shoulder, nearly painfully colliding with my back each stride.

I ran into him like a charging boar, except without the intent of actually hitting someone. We toppled over - quite awesomely, might I add - onto the concrete. No one was hurt, except for a few bruises, but the bag of bird seed had been spilled. Black and brown mix splashed onto the ground, a wave sliding from the bag and out.

"_Mon dieu_..." he groaned as he rubbed his shoulder, a grimace on his face

I didn't care about the boy I just ran over, though. I silently cursed and started scooping up the spilled food back into the bag. I threw a quick "sorry" to the blonde haired boy. He was not as courteous.

"_Vous avez le cervau d'un sandwich au fromage_! Would it kill you to watch what's in front of you?"

I didn't need to know French to know that the first sentence was an insult. Later I found out that he said that I had the brain of a cheese sandwich.

Yeah, we didn't have the perfect meeting.

I wasn't and still am not one to apologize so quickly, so with the bird's food forgotten, we had an insult contest right there on the pathway. It wasn't until Ludwig, age eight, came around the corner and saw the mess that our battle ended.

Ludwig yelled at me for being careless and leaving the mess on the ground, and to get back to work. You'd think it'd be comical to see an eight year-old tell off a fourteen year-old, but honestly, Ludwig could pass for a middle school student already. No longer was he carrying sponges for the janitors, now he cleaned the big boy stuff: shit. And lots of it. He didn't complain, though.

So, I finished pushing as much bird seed back into the bag as I could before picking it up and tossing it over my shoulder again. The boy was still there.

"What do you want?" I asked sourly. I could see him eyeing the bag curiously, so I already knew what he wanted to know.

"Why do you have a big bag of bird seed?"

"Because I have to feed the birds."

"Do you work here?"

"Yup," I said proudly. Of course, I only did part-time. I still had to go to school like any other kid - except I was homeschooled at the zoo.

Now, before any of you get the idea that my family lived at the place, I'll tell you right now that we didn't. We lived across from it, but it sure felt like we _did _live their, though. More time was spent there than anywhere else. So really, it was like I did work there.

"So, you have access to inside all of the cages, and all?"

"You bet."

I saw his eyes light up, like any other kid's would have.

"Do you think you could take me to feed the birds with you?"

It wasn't guesswork to know he'd ask that; what kid wouldn't?

After thinking about it for a while (for about five seconds), I answered, "Sure, I guess."

He smiled and took my hand, leading me towards my original destination. I remember being confused about why he was holding my hand, but now I know that's just him being French.

"My name's Francis," he told me.

"Gilbert."

That was the beginning of my second meeting of the two of them.

It wasn't until the next morning that Francis brought his friend. I hadn't expected the blonde to come back so soon, if at all, nevertheless bring someone with him.

It was the last stop on my morning route around the grounds: the turtles. Back then they still only had the small enclosure equipped with a miniature watering hole that marked one side of the exhibit, the opposite being large boulders that were bordered by smaller rocks for the turtles to climb on, a few newly planted trees here and there.

I found the two of them leaning farther over the rail than should be allowed. The boy next to Francis looked Spanish, judging from his dark features; tan skin that didn't seem to be that shade from the sun, and dark chocolate hair. He was eagerly pointing at something in the enclosure, but I was too far away to see what.

Together, they seemed familiar.

Before I could think too hard on it, Francis noticed my presence, and jumped away from the rail, running to me instead.

"_Bonjour_! I thought I'd see you around here." He smiled at me before draping his arm around my shoulders, pushing me towards the Spanish boy. "This is Antonio. He's a friend of mine, in case you haven't figured that out."

Antonio looked me in the eyes with a bright smile and waved. "Hola!"

The green eyes were what gave him away. I hadn't known their names, but I remembered when I had met Francis and Antonio before.

At this point, it meant nothing to me. So what if I had met them before? You meet people everyday at the zoo, and it wasn't uncommon for people to come more than once in their life.

I know - and I knew at the time - that in so many stories nowadays, it's a cliché theme that two people realize they've met before, and decide it must be destiny. That was in stories. This is real life.

It's ironic, really. I had no clue back then how much these two would corrode my defenses. It was a slow process, both of them sneaking into my heart without me noticing, then one day, I realized that it wasn't my brother, my family, or my birds that made me happy - it was them.

I've tried to imagine life without them. I try not to, since each time I do I either dig myself into a temporary depression, or I think too hard and nearly give myself an aneurism.

Either way, I've come to the conclusion that we're like a triangle. If even one of us is taken away for too long, the other two collapse.

I guess this was our downfall in the end.

I won't go further in detail, however. That specific part happens much later, and telling you now would just ruin the whole thing. That wouldn't be very awesome would it?

No, this my friends, was only the begging of a long, complicated story.

* * *

**AN: **So, sorry it's pretty short, but if I didn't end it there, I would have never stopped, and this would be one monster one-shot. Anyway, I hope you liked the beginning of this little thing I've been using to get out my frustrations - laughs-.


End file.
